Tag: high speed internet

This opinion piece is misguided because he didn’t fully read and appreciate the analysis by the City of San Francisco. Broadband Internet it not a utility; nor should it be considered one. Broadband Internet Service can be sold in a competitive market allowing for choice and price competition to consumers. A utility would create a regulated service with little choice and ever-increasing prices. Also, “Gigabit” bandwidth is not a necessity at the moment. Bandwidth at or above the current FCC definition is adequate for almost all of the population, and bandwidth at 4 times the definition would work for 99% of the population.

I agree with many of the premises the author claims as to the benefits of broadband service, but I draw the line that it needs to be under control and subsidized by the government. The City makes a good case for building and operating an open-access fiber infrastructure through a public-private partnership which I agree. The result will be the same but how we get there will be less risky for taxpayers and benefit residents of the city more.

BY BRIAN PURCHIA

What if I told you that 100,000 San Franciscans, including thousands of public school students, do not have electricity or water at home? I imagine many of you would be appalled and call for our government to step in and help. Now, substitute the Internet for water and electricity. Would you still be upset? According to the latest analysis from the city of San Francisco, more than a 100,000 residents in the land of Twitter and Salesforce, do not have access to the Internet at home. Fifty thousand more have sluggish dial-up speeds.

How is this possible? And who is responsible for fixing the situation? Continue reading

Although Longmont now claims to have the speediest Internet service in the U.S., mine isn’t that bad considering I am on Comcast just a few miles outside Longmont’s city limits and paying about the same as the NextLight service. This just goes to show that a real competitive market will drive all players to improve for the benefit of the consumer.

By Karen AntonacciStaff Writer

Longmont Power & Communications’ NextLight Internet service is the fastest in the country, according to speed testing company Ookla.

Ookla, based in Seattle, owns SpeedTest.net, and has previously licensed its Internet testing technology to the Federal Communications Commission when the FCC wanted to build its own application.

Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) said three months ago that it would be making an early deployment of its Google Fiber, an ultra-speed Internet service, in Raleigh and numerous other North Carolina municipalities. Recently, the tech giant put up quite an announcement with the governor and the mayor of Raleigh, regarding the company spreading out its fiber-optic cables throughout the developed city. This may seem easy to begin with, but it is certainly hard to implement both practically and legally.

Google Fiber is stated to provide speeds hundred times faster than any other basic broadband. Craig Settles, a telecommunications advisor, said: “We’re early enough into the game, where people are going to be paying a lot of attention,” adding, “People are still going to figure out, how are we going to do this? What will be the success factors in Raleigh?” Continue reading